Resurrection
by Lizwontcry
Summary: Leo Tolstoy and GSR, how could you go wrong? Snippets of moments between Grissom and Sara.


_A/N - This was for the Summer Reading challenge on Geekfiction. The challenge was to take a classic author and somehow incorporate them with CSI. _

**A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite**. - Leo Tolstoy

Sara Sidle didn't really enjoy eating meat, but she'd have the occasional cheeseburger or turkey sandwich. However, that all changed when she and Gil Grissom spent the night with a pig.

They were investigating the case of Kaye Shelton, a woman found wrapped in a blanket in the desert. Every piece of evidence was pointing at Scott, her husband, as the murderer. Sara had seen a lot in her life, but this man...this arrogant jackass of a pathetic man was making her blood boil. When Sara dared raise her voice to Scott during the interrogation, he told Grissom, "You have your hands full with her!" Oh, how she wanted to kick him right where it would count.

Sara was starting to think nothing ever bothered Grissom anymore. He'd been a CSI for a long time and had probably seen it all by this point. She wanted him to get angry. She wanted him to break all the rules, bust Scott Shelton in the lip and take him to jail. But Grissom was about the evidence, and she was learning to deal with that.

It was only when she learned he was outside doing an experiment with a pig wrapped in a blanket that she knew he cared. He wanted to solve this case, and he was going use this evidence to prove Scott Shelton's guilt. It gave her comfort that moving to Las Vegas was the right choice after all. It was a bold choice...abandon everything she knew in California to be closer to the man she had a raging crush on? It was hasty, but she couldn't give up a chance to be closer to him. It wasn't turning out the way she hoped it would, but she was learning new things about him every day. He cared. And she loved that he cared.

However, sitting with Grissom and watching that pig, snuggly as they were under that blanket she brought for them, she couldn't help but be disgusted. It was then and there that she made 2 promises to herself: One, she was going to be a vegetarian. She couldn't eat meat anymore, it was unnatural. Second, she wanted to be with Gil Grissom. If it never happened, if he never returned those feelings, at least she'd go down fighting.

**It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.** - Leo Tolstoy

Sara still did not believe he sent her a plant. It was sitting in a window, in all its plant glory.

Things were not exactly going as she planned. Just a few days ago, she came to him about a leave of absence. It wasn't that she didn't like being in Vegas; she actually found herself acclimating quite well to the desert. She really enjoyed working with her co-workers. Even Warrick, whom she definitely did not get off on the right foot with, was becoming quite a good friend. It was Grissom she was having the problem with.

Sometimes he'd flirt with her. Sometimes she'd flirt back, and he'd shut her down. Sometimes he'd be the moodiest son of a bitch she'd ever known, and the next day he was as happy as could be. That's why she found herself asking for the leave of absence. She was disappointed that their relationship never progressed to where she wanted it to go, but that's not why she needed to be somewhere else. She needed to leave because he didn't respect her, and it was killing her. And when he asked her to clean up the mess from his meat bullet experiment..that was the last straw.

He didn't say he'd give her the leave she asked for. The plant arrived the next day, and she looked at it, wondering if this was supposed to be a peace offering. It was typical Grissom, frustrating and maddening and yet completely charming at the same time.

A few days later they were at an ice rink, sitting in the stands and going over the case of the dead hockey player. Grissom dismissed hockey as a gruesome, bloody sport.

"You just don't like sports," Sara said. He never talked about sports and she always figured he didn't care. Nick and Warrick were always talking about some football game. Nick was a diehard Cowboys fan and Warrick always ribbed him about it.

"That's not true," Grissom said. "I've been a baseball fan all my life."

"Baseball. Well, that figures. All those stats."

"It's a beautiful game."

"Since when are you interested in beauty?" Sara asked, somewhat bitter and somewhat curious at the same time.

"Since I met you," he said, not looking at her.

_Interesting,_ she thought. _Interesting how this man has the power to make me want to strangle him one day and the next day, has me wanting to jump on top of him and stick my tongue down his throat. Interesting._

**The two most powerful warriors are patience and time**. - Leo Tolstoy

Gil Grissom was running out of time. He was going deaf, and the clock was against him.

He put it off as long as he could, but when Catherine started asking an increasing number of questions about why he was being so weird lately, he finally scheduled some time with Doc Robbins.

The good doctor looked at his ears and scolded, "Doesn't your mother have this condition?" Gil nodded. Waiting this long had not been a good idea, but denial had set in a long, long time ago.

"Look, Gil, I'm not going to preach to you," Doc Robbins said. "You came to me, but doctor to doctor, there's a chance the bone deposits have spread into the inner ear, in which case, your hearing loss will eventually be permanent. If I were you, I'd schedule surgery as soon as possible."

So he did, and it was successful. Once he recovered, all the other problems in his world started manifesting themselves twice as much.

What was he going to do about 'this'? Sara wanted something from him. She wanted to get inside his head, take his thoughts away and keep them for herself. And he didn't want her to do that. Yet.

If nothing else, he was a patient man. Love had not come easy to him in this life, and that was okay. He always figured he'd have time for that later, when he was established in his career. And yet, once he was established, a renowned entomologist and successful crime scene investigator, he found that love still evaded him. There was always a reason why, but he was finding himself running out of reasons when it came to Sara Sidle.

_It just isn't right_, he'd tell himself. _I mentored her. I helped lead her to the path she's on. I brought her to Las Vegas. I can't initiate something just to have her discover it wasn't what she wouldn't. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair, to her or to me._

But then she came into his office, shaken and stirred from the lab explosion, and flat out asked him to dinner. He didn't know what to say. He had patience; it was one of his strong points. But it was also one of his biggest faults. He wanted to wait. What was he waiting for? Maybe for 'this' to become so big that it consumed both of them. He was still pretty sure that hadn't happened yet.

"Would you like to have dinner with me?" She asked, looking him in the eye, daring him to say yes, daring him to do what he never allowed himself to do: get too close.

He could have said yes. He should have said yes. Instead, he said, "Sara, I don't know what to do about this."

"I do," she said, clearly disappointed. "You know, by the time you figure it out, it could be too late."

And she walked out. He watched her go. That beautiful, intelligent woman that challenged him every single day, who could have very well been taken away from him in a freakish lab explosion...he let her go.

_Damn, _he thought. He turned off the light and went home, having made maybe one of the biggest mistakes of his life: being too patient.

**If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.** - Leo Tolstoy

Dr. Lurie killed that nurse, and Grissom and Brass knew that for a fact. The doctor killed Debbie Marlin and her lover, and then he carved them into pieces with a scalpel. The only problem was, they couldn't seem to find sufficient evidence to prove it.

Grissom was disgusted. Partially with Dr. Lurie and how he ruthlessly killed those people, but mostly with himself. It was with a great deal of horror that he realized he knew exactly why Dr. Lurie did what he did, because Grissom could picture himself doing the same damn thing.

Sara was in his head. He let the situation get out of control, and now she was completely inside of him. The nurse, she looked like Sara. As soon as he saw this woman, all he could see was Sara. And when he opened the door to the outside world to give his team instructions, all he could see was Sara. And in that interrogation room, when he was talking to Dr. Lurie, trying to get this man to confess, all he could see was Sara.

He knew she was behind the glass. She told him she was going to watch the interrogation. He knew she heard what he was saying. And he knew she'd finally understand he didn't have the courage to do what both of them seemed to want. He was a coward. A disgusting coward, because he had empathy for this cold-blooded killer sitting across from him. Dr. Lurie fell in love with Debbie Marlin, a young woman that was offering to give him a new life, the life he never had because he was so career-driven. And when he lost that life, when she gave that life to someone else, something snapped inside of him. Grissom understood that feeling, and that's when he knew Sara had gotten the best of him.

So, it was over. He had his cards out on the table. And he hoped that would be the end of it. If she was hurt, and he hoped she wasn't, she'd get over him. Maybe she and Nick could find love together...or something. It was best for both of them to walk away from what could have been. He was no good for her. He was just an old workaholic, what could he ever offer a young, brilliant woman like her?

Even though he was far into his third shift, 24 straight hours with no sleep and barely anything to eat, when he came home, all he did was sit on his sofa and stare at the ceiling. Sleep wasn't coming. How could he sleep when he was such a damned coward?

He did eventually drift off to sleep, but it was with Sara's image, looking through the glass, hearing what he could never say face to face, running through his head.

**All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.** - Leo Tolstoy

Sara really was trying to get it together. After her near-arrest for a D.U.I. and subsequently being taken home by an awkward Grissom, she knew it was time to dump the bottles and start focusing on her career again. Not that she ever stopped in the first place, wasn't that what a workaholic was all about?

And she was doing well. Everybody noticed; everybody tried to support her in their own way. When she came back from the "vacation" she was on for a few months, everyone was extra nice to her, supporting her in any way they could. She knew Grissom would never tell anyone why she was on vacation, so she wondered what everyone thought happened.

In truth, she missed her mother. She missed her brother. She missed her father the most. Jacob Sidle was a jackass, an abuser, an alcoholic and an all-around terrible man. But when he wasn't busy being one or all of those things, he was genuinely an okay person. Before the drinking got out of control, he tried to take Sara and her brother to school every morning. She'd look forward to those 10-minute car rides, fighting over what to listen to on the radio or who got to sit in the front seat, stopping for donuts every Friday...she missed it. Sometimes, when the case at work had been particularly rough, when she saw something she wished she'd never seen, she thought about her father. She wondered if he would have been proud of her.

Watching as her mother stabbed her father to death was not something she obviously enjoyed talking about. She went to counseling all through her junior high and high school years and nothing ever came out of it. Every counselor she talked to never seemed to get that Sara understood why her mother did it. And if she was in the same position, which she wouldn't be because she'd never let a man do that to her, she'd do the same thing.

Laura Sidle was out of prison, living in San Francisco and running a small boutique. Sara could go see her mother. She could get in her car, drive out of Nevada and into California, and see her mother. It was so simple, and yet she never could find the nerve to do it.

So when Sara got involved in the case with the Russian mail order brides, it triggered something in her. Some of those brides were obviously being abused, and it was everything Sara stood against. Yes, she blew up at Catherine. Yes, she blew up extra hard with Ecklie, and God, that felt good. Yes, she got suspended and yes it was worth it.

It was completely unexpected when Grissom came to her apartment. Not unpleasant, just unexpected. When he showed up at her door, she was doing writing in her journal. Writing her thoughts, writing anything that didn't have to do with a case file, didn't come easy to her and she used her suspension as an excuse to explore that. There wasn't a plan or an outline or a summary in mind, she just wanted to write.

He knocked on her door, and there he was. She put her pen down and let him in. He tried to get her to talk; she didn't want to. After practically begging her to tell him what was wrong, she did. In fact, she told him everything. And it was a relief. After so many years of avoiding talking about anything that could be considered personal, she was finally telling him the one thing she never wanted to tell anyone. He rewarded her by holding her hand. When he sensed she was okay with that, he inched closer to her, watching her cry with a stricken look on his face. Eventually, he sat next to her, holding her hand, keeping his arm around her, drying her tears with his sleeve.

After that day, no longer could either of them deny there was something between them, something that had been growing for nearly 10 years, something that was bigger than the both of them.

**If you want to be happy, be.** - Leo Tolstoy

Grissom handed out case assignments. He assigned Warrick and Catherine a DB with suspicious circs in Henderson. He sent Greg and Nick's temporary replacement, a quiet but efficient man they took from day shift while Nick recovered from his strange kidnapping experience, to a robbery-turned-murder on the strip, and he saved the best for last for he and Sara - a decomp found by Lake Mead.

Things with Sara had certainly been interesting lately. First, there was his impromptu visit to her apartment. Then there was the incident with the inmate taking Sara hostage for what seemed like hours, but was really only minutes. 5 of the longest minutes of his life. And then, with what happened to Nicky...a lot happened in the past couple of months to make him see what was always right in front of him. Now, he was merely waiting for the right moment to initiate what he should have years ago.

Sara followed him to the Denali and slid in the passenger seat. While he started the car, she looked at the book that was sitting in the console.

_"War and Peace,_ huh? I never figured you a Tolstoy kind of guy."

"Why not? I have a bit of a soft spot for Russian writers. They always have a different perspective from everyone else."

"Hmm," she said, thumbing through the pages. "You know, Tolstoy's wife, the love of his life, was 16 years younger than him." She said this without looking at him, with a slightly mischievous smile forming on her lips.

Gil didn't need to do the math to know what Sara was saying in her Sara-way.

_Oh, hell, _he thought. _I may never have a better opportunity. _So he leaned over and he kissed her. They hadn't even left the parking lot, any one of their co-workers could have walked by to witness this miracle in the making, but Grissom couldn't let this opportunity pass him by.

When the kiss finally ended, Sara smiled. She didn't even look surprised.

"Finally," she said, looking so beautiful and sexy and he wanted to cancel the whole day and take the Denali to his house so he could make her smile that way for hours on end.

Instead, he drove to the crime scene, holding her hand, happy that something finally changed for the better.

**True life is lived when tiny changes occur.** - Leo Tolstoy

"I'll miss you," he said. And then he left her in the locker room, wondering why the hell he had to leave. She still couldn't wrap her head around why he had to go away for a month after barely discussing it with her. Weren't they happy together? He made her happy, even if he did let his work consume him in a way she could never comprehend.

After a few days in her apartment, which she had all but abandoned to pretty much live in his townhouse, she came to peace with his decision. It was hasty, it didn't make sense, but that was what Gil Grissom was all about. She hoped he would find everything he was looking for while he was gone

When she received the cocoon and no note, she was a little irritated at first. But again, that was Grissom, an enigma wrapped in an enigma. So she wrote him an email.

_Griss - Thanks for the cocoon. I am anxious to see what it has hiding inside it. I hope that you found what you were looking for out there in Massachusetts, and I hope you come back to the ones who are looking for you. I love you, and I hope you find your way back home soon._

A few hours later, she got a reply.

_Sara - I didn't find what I was looking for out here. I was looking for some reason why I feared the changes occurring in my life, and it didn't take me long to find one. Sara, you are incredible, you are everything I ever asked for as a child, as a teenager, as an adult...and it terrifies me. Being here at Williams, teaching anxious, bored students makes me think of teaching a youthful, inquisitive, beautiful Sara Sidle. It made me wonder why in the hell I ever left you standing there in that locker room. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you._

She forgave him for not sending a note with the cocoon.

**Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. **- Leo Tolstoy

He watched her from the most uncomfortable chair in the world. The doctors didn't even know the extent of her injuries yet; they were just worried about the dehydration and the shock. She wasn't talking; couldn't talk. But she looked at Grissom with recognition in her eyes when he was the first one to run to that damn Mustang, take her hand and tell her it was going to be okay; they found her and she was going to be fine. And right before they put her under, she smiled at him. It was all he needed to keep the faith.

He would never guess, after 9 months of chasing after the shadows of the person they called the Miniature Killer, that this crazy, deranged woman would go after Sara. Natalie Davis had gotten the best of Gil Grissom. He only hoped she hadn't got the best of Sara, too.

Loving Sara Sidle made Grissom a better man. All those years that he did nothing about "this," she never gave up. She never stopped looking at him in that way that made him feel like a hero. She never gave up on him; never, ever judged him. And now she was perhaps fighting for life, all because this woman wanted to take away the only person he ever truly loved.

He stayed in that chair for 3 days. He got up to use the bathroom, which was right next door. The only food he ate was brought to him. Catherine, Nick, Warrick, Greg, Brass, even Doc Robbins; they came in shifts, checking on Sara and bringing him something to eat. None of them tried to talk him out of leaving. He wasn't going to do that, and they knew that.

The third day, Sara opened her eyes. She smiled when she saw Grissom dozing off in the chair next to her. She reached for him, but he was too far away to touch. Grissom instantly opened his eyes, not sure what was happening but knowing he had to see what was going on. She was reaching for him. He let out a sigh of relief.

It was going to be okay. She was going to be okay. He brought her, damaged but not broken, back to the townhouse, careful to not let Bruno jump on his fragile mommy. She didn't talk much about what happened; she didn't talk much at all. But when she did start talking, it was in sympathy of her captor.

"Did Natalie know I was in the system, too? Did she know that I was a foster child, too? She must not have known," she said a few days after getting back to the house. They were in bed. He was holding her carefully, trying not to irritate any of her injuries.

"Honey, I don't think it would have mattered if she did know. She was not mentally stable, I don't think she ever was."

She drifted off to sleep, but he didn't. He was amazed by this incredible woman lying beside him. She was tortured by someone she never even met; a woman that was trying to get even with the man who took her foster father away from her. Yet she still saw something in Natalie Davis. She saw the fragile little girl that spent most of her childhood in foster homes. just like Sara.

Grissom watched her sleep. He looked up at the ceiling and did something he hadn't done in a long time - he thanked God.

**Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.** - Leo Tolstoy


End file.
